The new Cleveland

Since big-time professional sports arrived in 1966, teams sailing under the Atlanta flag have completed 148 seasons. (We won’t count baseball in 1994, when the World Series was canceled by a players’ strike, or the 2004-2005 NHL campaign, which was scrubbed due to a lockout.) Only one has yielded a championship. That’s a batting average of .007, which is nice if you’re James Bond, less nice if you’ve invested financial and emotional capital in any of those 147 misses.﻿ …

Over the same span, the modest city of Pittsburgh has won 10 championships — 11 if you count the ABA crown taken by the Pipers. Long-suffering Philadelphia has six titles since 1966. Denver has four, one at Atlanta’s expense.